Ultramarines Omnibus (warhammer 40000: ultramarines)

by Graham McNeill

  Barzano slumped against the slab, fighting to stay conscious through the screaming agony of his shredded arm. A thick layer of skin and muscle flapped from his elbow and he forced himself not to look at the damage.

  Fresh impacts slammed against the door and he bent to snatch a pistol of strange appearance from the Surgeon's belt, his every movement causing supernovas of agony to explode in his skull.

  He felt, rather than saw, movement beside him and he swayed, bringing the pistol to bear.

  Almerz Chanda pushed himself into a sitting position, his ruined body making one last surge before death claimed him.

  His features spoke of the most hideous pain imaginable and Barzano could sense the madness the Surgeon's art had pushed the man into. But he also sensed his desperate need for atonement behind the pits of insanity.

  As Barzano fought to remain upright, the door to the Surgeon's chambers finally crashed open.

  Uriel hammered his fist through a guardsman's visor, the man's face disintegrating under the blow. A lasbolt scored his breastplate, but the armour held firm and Uriel killed the shooter with a well placed bolter round. He swung his chainsword in a brutal arc, beheading another trooper and disembowelling a second. He fired his pistol into the face of a third and roared with the savage joy of combat.

  The trench was a killing ground.

  The wrath of the Ultramarines knew no bounds as they tore the men of the PDF to pieces, overrunning the trench with the fury of their charge. Bolt pistols fired, chainswords flashed red in the sunlight and gouts of liquid fire roasted men alive. There was no quarter given and within seconds the trench was nothing more than an open grave for the men of the PDF.

  Before the impetus of the charge could be lost, Uriel yelled at his men to follow him, scrambling from the trench and sprinting onwards to the bunkers. Heavy calibre shells ripped a path towards him, but he jinked to one side, avoiding the hail of bullets. Firing as he ran, his charge carried him to within ten metres of the bunker. He could see Pasanius firing a long stream of liquid fire through the firing slit of the second bunker, the orange flames licking all around the giant warrior as he filled the enemy strongpoint with searing death.

  Uriel dived and rolled to the foot of the bunker, narrowly avoiding being cut in two by a point blank burst of gunfire. His back slammed into its front wall. The bunker was a squat slab of rockcrete, protruding a metre above ground level with narrow gun slits in every side. Grenades would be useless. The bunker was sure to have a grenade sump, a protected chamber where the troops inside could dump grenades in order to negate their force.

  More shots spewed from the bunker and Uriel waited until he heard the distinctive sound of a heavy bolter slide racking back empty. He held his breath, straining to hear the double click of a new belt feed of shells being shucked into a hot breech.

  Uriel roared and rose up in front of the bunker, driving his chainsword through the firing slit and into the gunner's face. A bubbling scream and crack of bone sounded, and Uriel reached inside, dragging the heavy weapon through the slit.

  He quickly spun the weapon and pushed the muzzle into the bunker, squeezing the trigger and working the bucking gun left and right, filling the bunker with explosive shells. The screaming from inside was short lived, but Uriel waited until the last of the shells from the belt feed had been expended and the firing hammer clicked down empty.

  Uriel dropped the weapon, sweat and blood coating his features.

  The bunkers were theirs and the prison complex lay open before him.

  The prison guards burst into the torture chamber to be confronted by an apparition from their worst nightmares. Almerz Chanda threw himself forward with the last vestige of his strength, carrying the first men through the door to the ground.

  Thrashing and screaming, the dying Chanda wailed in agony, the sound tearing at the nerves of everyone within earshot. Instinctively, the attackers fired. Lasbolts blasted Chanda's ravaged body, punching through him into the men beneath.

  Chanda's death scream was one of release rather than pain.

  The following troops tore their eyes from the horrifically mutilated man to the chamber's sole remaining living occupant. Barzano swayed, one side of his body completely drenched in blood. Chanda's death had bought him precious seconds he did not intend to waste. He aimed the Surgeon's pistol at the guards and pulled the trigger.

  A hail of dark needles fired in an expanding cone, shredding the closest guards and killing them instantly. The guards behind were not so fortunate and the venom-tipped needles flooded their bloodstreams with lethal alien toxins.

  Barzano staggered to the door as the guards fell back, some spasming in their death throes as the poison did its evil work, others retreating as they saw the fate of those in front. The inquisitor pushed shut the door, sliding to the floor as his strength poured from him in the wash of blood from his ruined arm.

  More screams sounded from outside, gunfire and explosions. He felt something push against the door and weakly tried to hold it shut, but he could not prevent it from opening. He slumped to the floor, his vision blurring and attempted to raise the alien pistol.

  Sergeant Learchus plucked the pistol from the inquisitor's hand and hurled it aside as he and two of his battle brothers entered the torture chamber along with Mykola Shonai, Lortuen Perjed and half a dozen petrified scribes. One of the Space Marines carried Jenna Sharben and gently deposited the wounded judge on the Surgeon's slab.

  'See to him,' ordered Learchus, pointing at the unconscious Barzano.

  Learchus activated his vox. 'Captain Ventris, we have Inquisitor Barzano. He is alive, but badly wounded. We will need to get him aboard the Vae Victus soon if we are to save his life.'

  Uriel charged through the smoking remains of the prison complex gateway, firing as he ran. The blast had killed most of the defenders on the inside: over the ringing echoes of the gate's destruction, only the moans of the dying could be heard.

  His spirits had soared when Learchus had informed him of the inquisitor's safety, knowing that he had made the right decision to have the sergeant remain within the palace and break into the prison complex from above.

  Learchus had Barzano, but there were several hundred men below ground. They still had to reach their brethren and pull them to safety. Pasanius poured another sheet of fire down the rough-hewn stairs that led into the darkness of the prison.

  Screams boiled up from below, and Uriel once more led the charge of the Ultramarines.

  Learchus fired another blast of bolter fire through the door, felling two guards and wounding a third. Thus far they had held off three attacks, but ammunition was low and they were running out of time. There were another two entrances to this chamber and each of the Space Marines fought desperately to hold off the waves of attackers with bolter and chainsword.

  Mykola Shonai and Lortuen Perjed desperately battled to halt the flow of blood from Barzano's arm, but it was a fight they were losing. The Surgeon's blade had cut him to the bone from wrist to elbow and this place had only instruments for the taking of life, not its preservation. Barzano's flesh was ashen, his pulse weak and thready.

  More and more guards hurled themselves through the doors, each time to be cut down by deadly bolts or hacked apart by shrieking chainswords. The stink of death filled the chamber.

  Learchus dropped his bolter as his last magazine finally exhausted itself and charged the door as more enemies tried to force their way inside. His sword hacked the first men to death, before lasbolts hurled the sergeant from his feet. Status runes flashed red on his visor. He rolled and chopped the legs out from one man, thundering his fist into the groin of another. Bayonets stabbed at him, most sliding clear across his armoured might.

  He stabbed and chopped, kicking and punching in all directions, feeling bones break with every motion of his body. Gunfire boomed as he pushed himself clear of his attackers, roaring with battle fury, a living engine of killing frenzy.

  They were holding, but they
could not continue to do so for long.

  A backhanded blow sent another enemy screaming into hell as Uriel and Pasanius pushed deeper into the prison complex. Uriel's helmet lay abandoned on the battlefield above them, so he followed Pasanius, the locator augers within the sergeant's helmet directing them towards Learchus.

  He could hear the screams of dying men and furious battle from up ahead and sprinted round a corner to see scores of men pushing themselves forward through a wide door. Pasanius did not even wait for the order, simply engulfing the men in fire from his lethal flamer. Screams and the stench of scorched flesh filled the cramped corridor as the Ultramarines fell upon the prison guards from behind.

  It was a massacre. The soldiers had nowhere to run to. Caught between the fury of Sergeant Learchus and this new assault, the survivors threw themselves at the mercy of Uriel. But there was none to be had and every soldier perished.

  Uriel pushed himself into the Surgeon's torture chamber, breathing heavily and wiping blood from his face. Bodies littered the chamber and the stink of blood was overpowering. The silence was a sudden contrast from the screaming combat of moments ago and Learchus blinked, lowering his blood-sheathed chainsword.

  Uriel marched to meet Learchus and gripped his hand.

  'Well met, brother,' whispered Uriel.

  Learchus nodded. 'Aye, well met, captain.'

  The Thunderhawk roared upwards, chased by a few hastily converted shuttle-gunships and ornithopters. Designed to strafe slow moving ground targets, they were out of their element against the Space Marine craft and, after losing seven of their number, pulled back.

  The rescue of Inquisitor Barzano had cost the lives of three Ultramarines and two of Barzano's scribes who had been killed in the crossfire raging throughout the torture chamber. Lortuen Perjed was adamant that they receive full honours upon their burial.

  Before attending to the wounded, Apothecary Selenus had removed the vital progenoid glands from the bodies of the fallen Space Marines. The recovery of the precious gene-seed took precedence over normal battlefield triage.

  He stabilised the inquisitor and set up a live transfusion of blood from a scribe with a matching blood type. The man expressed his willingness to be bled dry in order to save the inquisitor's life, but Selenus assured him that such drastic measures would not be necessary.

  He had treated Jenna Sharben's wound and though she would be incapacitated for many days yet, she would live and suffer no long-term damage from her injury. Of the surviving Ultramarines, the majority of their wounds were largely superficial.

  The battered Thunderhawk pulled into high orbit, finally making rendezvous with the Vae Victus and bringing her warriors home.

  The senior officers of the Pavonis expedition gathered in the captain's briefing room, assembled around a circular table hewn from the slow growing mountain firs that surrounded the Fortress of Hera on Macragge.

  Lord Admiral Tiberius sat with his back to the wall, below a magnificent silken banner listing the victories of his vessel and her previous captains stretching back to a time centuries before his birth. To one side of Tiberius sat the battle-weary Ultramarines, fresh from their battles on Pavonis: Uriel, Learchus, Pasanius, Venasus and Dardino. On the opposite side of the table sat Mykola Shonai and Lortuen Perjed.

  Between them was an unoccupied chair and as Mykola Shonai took a sip of water, the last member of the council of war arrived, cradling his left arm in a synthflesh bandage and walking with a pronounced limp.

  Uriel watched Barzano hobble into the briefing room, noting the telltale gleam in his eyes that indicated heavy stimm use. The inquisitor was obviously using medical stimulants to block the pain from his wounded arm and shoulder. He sat opposite Uriel, his face ashen.

  'Very well,' began Barzano, 'I think it's fair to say that the situation is grim. Kasimir de Valtos has control on Pavonis, and at any moment could have his hands on an ancient alien weapon capable of unleashing destruction on a system-wide scale. Would everyone agree that is a fair assessment of our situation?'

  No one disagreed with the inquisitor.

  'What do you suggest then, Inquisitor Barzano?' asked Tiberius.

  'What I would suggest is that you send a coded communication to Macragge and have a battle-barge armed with cyclonic torpedoes despatched to Pavonis.'

  Uriel slammed his fist down on the table.

  'No!' he stated forcefully, 'I will not have it. We came here to save these people, not to destroy them.'

  Tiberius placed a calming hand on Uriel's arm. Mykola Shonai looked from Uriel to Barzano, a confused look upon her features.

  'Perhaps I am missing something,' she said. 'What are cyclonic torpedoes?'

  'Planet killers,' answered Uriel. 'They will burn the atmosphere of Pavonis away in a storm of fire, scouring the surface bare until there is nothing left alive. The seas will boil to vapour and your world will become a barren rock, wreathed in the ashes of your people.'

  Shonai turned a horrified stare upon Barzano. 'You would destroy my world?' she asked incredulously.

  Slowly, Barzano nodded. 'If it means preventing a madman getting his hands on the Bringer of Darkness, then yes, I would. Better to sacrifice one world than lose Emperor knows how many others because we shirked from doing our duty.'

  'It is not our duty to kill innocent people,' pointed out Uriel.

  'Our duty is to save as many lives as we can,' countered Barzano. 'If we do nothing and de Valtos succeeds in retrieving the alien ship, many more worlds will die. I do not make this decision lightly, Uriel, but I must rely on cold logic and the Emperor to guide me.'

  'I cannot believe this is the Emperor's will.'

  'Who are you to judge what the Emperor wants?' snapped Barzano. 'You are a warrior who can see his enemies on the battlefield and smite them with sword and bolter. My enemies are heresy, deviancy and ambition. More insidious foes than you could ever imagine and the weapons I must use are consequently of greater magnitude.'

  'You can't do this, Barzano,' said Uriel. 'My men have fought and bled for this world, I will not give up on it.'

  'It is not a question of giving up, Uriel,' explained Barzano. 'It is a question of prevention. We do not know where de Valtos is or how he intends to find the ship and without that information we can do nothing. If we hesitate and are too late to prevent him gaining possession of the Nightbringer, how many more lives will be lost? Ten billion? A thousand billion? More?'

  'Surely there is something we can try to stop de Valtos?' asked Shonai. 'There are millions of people on Pavonis. I will not just stand by and hear the fate of my world discussed as though its destruction were a matter of no import.'

  Barzano turned to face Shonai and said, 'Believe me, Mykola, I am not some heartless monster and I do not believe the death of even a single world to be of no import. Were there another way, I would gladly choose it. I have never been forced to destroy a world before, and if I could stop de Valtos any other way, I would.'

  As Barzano spoke, the words of Gedrik echoed in his head once more.

  The Death of Worlds and the Bringer of Darkness await to be born into this galaxy. One will arise or neither, it is in your hands to choose which.

  'Do you really mean that, Inquisitor Barzano?' he asked.

  'Mean what?' asked Barzano, his tone wary.

  'About choosing another way if you could.'

  'Yes, I do.'

  'Then I believe there is another way,' said Uriel.

  Barzano raised a sceptical eyebrow and leaned forwards, resting his arms on the tabletop, careful to avoid jarring his wounded arm. 'And what would that be, Uriel?'

  Uriel sensed the criticality of this moment and mustered his thoughts before speaking.

  'When I was in the home of de Valtos, and we found the two skeleton warriors in the depths of his house, I noticed the battery packs they were hooked up to had identification markings on them.'

  'So?'

  'They were marked with the words "Tembra Ridge
" - perhaps the governor can shed some light on that,' answered Uriel.

  'Tembra Ridge? It's a range of mountains roughly a hundred kilometres north of Brandon Gate. They stretch from the western ocean to the Gresha forest in the east, nearly a thousand kilometres of rocky uplands and scrub forests. It's a mining region: there are hundreds of deep bore mines along its length. Most of the cartels own title to land along Tembra Ridge. The de Valtos cartel have several.'

  'If those things were unearthed from one of the mines along Tembra Ridge, is it not likely that the Nightbringer itself lies beneath the ground there too?' pointed out Uriel.

  Barzano nodded with a smile. 'Very good, Uriel. Now if we could only pinpoint which one they came from we would truly have something to celebrate.'

  Barzano's tone was mildly sarcastic, but Uriel could see he was at least considering the idea that the extermination of Pavonis might not be inevitable. The inquisitor turned to Mykola Shonai.

  'How deep do these bore mines go?' he asked,

  'It varies,' replied Shonai, 'but the deepest are perhaps ten thousand metres, while others are around three or four thousand. It depends on the seam that is being mined and how deep it's economically viable to continue drilling.'

  'Then we find out which of the mines are owned by the de Valtos cartel and bombard them all into oblivion from orbit,' growled Uriel.

  'Lortuen?' said Barzano, turning to his aide, who nodded thoughtfully and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed, his eyelids fluttering as he culled facts, figures and statistics from the wealth of information he and his scribes had gathered during their researches.

  Uriel watched as the old man's eyes flickered rapidly from side to side as though reading information flashing past on the inside of his eyelids, noticing for the first time the tiny glint of metal behind his ear. The old man had been fitted with cybernetic implants, presumably something similar to those of a lexmechanic or savant servitor.

  Without opening his eyes, Perjed spoke in a flat monotone, 'There are four mines along Tembra Ridge owned by the de Valtos cartel. All produce mineral ore to be refined into processed steel for tank chassis and gun barrels, but the northernmost's production level is by far the lowest. I suspect that its shortfall is being covered by over-production in the other facilities, which would account for the higher number of worker accidents reported at the other mines.'